10 Transgender Artists Who Are Changing The Landscape Of Contemporary Art

By Priscilla Frank

Working in an array of artistic media including photography, video, sculpture, classical music and the spoken word, transgender artists are sharing their stories and experiences, their trauma and hope, their pasts and futures -- on their own terms. Whether defining themselves as transgender, gender variant, transfeminine or gender failure, the following artists challenge our current understandings of identity while paving the way for a more aware and accepting future.

With skill, bravery, humor and passion, the following artists interpret transgender life in radically different ways, revealing the infinitely multifaceted reality of the trans experience. The following artistic forces have contributed immensely to the growing transgender presence in the art world and thus in the greater cultural consciousness. Behold, 10 trans artists who are radically changing the landscape of contemporary art.

While some view transgender identity as crossing from one gender to another, Cassils breaks down binaries to create a vision of continuous -- and sometimes slippery -- becoming. "I use my physical body as sculptural mass to rupture societal norms," Cassils stated to HuffPost. "Drawing on conceptualism, feminism, body art, gay male aesthetics, and Hollywood cinema, I forge a series of powerfully trained bodies for different performative and formal purposes. It is with sweat, blood and sinew that I construct a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories."

In the work above Cassils attacked a 2,000-pound clay block with kicks and blows in complete darkness, the happening occasionally illuminated by a photographer's flash. The piece, dubbed "Becoming an Image," grapples with issues of evidence, documentation and memory.

Garbasz's work simultaneously explores her mother's experiences as a Jewish Holocaust survivor and the artist's own personal journey with gender identity. Much of Garbasz's work revolves around the pain of trauma and the beauty that comes with reconciliation, such as her work in the Fukushima Nuclear Exclusion Zone. "My journey through the physical and spiritual reality of Fukushima is part of a life-long quest to explore and document spaces that were affected by trauma," she explained. "My explorations focus on places that are mostly forgotten and traumas whose physical signs have been erased or are invisible. These places are in fact home to a new reality. It is at this intersection where my work takes place."

4. Cooper Lee Bombardier

The Last Three Years

Bombardier is a visual artist, writer, illustrator and performer, whose past jobs include construction worker, cook, carpenter, union stagehand, welder, shop steward, dishwasher, truck driver and housepainter. "As a writer and an artist I am interested in exploring hinterlands and uncovering subjugated knowledges," Bombardier said. "My creative work is concerned with themes of gender, masculinity and manhood; survival, resiliency, and healing; juxtapositions of culture and identity; and the physical experience and positioning of the queer body in the world; labor and how what we do for money shapes who we are. My work is about journeys: on the road, in community; of body and heart; and the never-ending search to know oneself."

With lyrics including "Lesbian, gay, bisexual/ Transgender and transsexual/ It’s better to ask if you don’t know/ A message from the Queer Trans Prairie Tourism Co," the songs address LGBT issues with humor and hope. Spoon teamed up with director Chelsea McMullan to create the documentary-musical "My Prairie Home," which debuted at Sundance. "Whatever I am trying to communicate with my work," Spoon explained, "I want my audience to sense that I am thinking about them and how they experience my music and writing."

7. & 8. Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst

Relationship, #23, 2008-13, c-print, 13 x 20 in

Drucker and Ernst are two transgender artists who have documented their romantic relationship and gender transitions through a stunning photo series entitled "Relationship." The works, which are currently on view at the Whitney Biennial, interlace banal moments of coupledom with shots that reveal more intimate details of gender transition, privileging neither. "This series of photographs represented a return to photography for both of us, and is simultaneously an extension of our narrative film-making practices," Drucker wrote to HuffPost.

"It is the real-life film of our 'romance collaboration.' Our bodies are a microcosm of the greater external world-transitions or shifts that we, as humanity, are looking at in 2014. As our earth transitions from abundance into depletion and the decay of our environment. As we move from institutionalized patriarchy to gender equality, and from heterosexist social structures to a more polymorphous spectrum of sexuality."

On being an artist, Ernst added, "I'm happiest creating things -- using my intuition and creativity and I think it's because I come from a family of artists and thinkers. I couldn't image it being any other way."

9. Ivan Coyote

Photo credit Adam P.W. Smith

Coyote started off singing in a lesbian folk band before realizing they preferred the banter between songs to the actual singing. They now combines music, storytelling, performance poetry and monologue in a singular practice. In their words: "I’ve never really been much into labels. I am interested in telling stories from the little niche that I have carved out for myself outside of the established gender binary, in the 'not really' space between male and female. I am writing myself down so I can find myself later."

Tsang, who identifies as "transfeminine and transguy," is a Chinese-Swedish-American video artist whose work combines activism, community organizing and the art of the party. At 25 years old Tsang opened up a weekly club night at the LA immigrant gay bar Silver Platter, which he called "Wildness." Tsang documented the mixing of communities as artists and punks mingled with the Latino drag community, questioning the meaning of a "safe space."